


Too Little, Too Much

by Rony Ark (D_Morrissey)



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Unfinished
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 13:32:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/610358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/D_Morrissey/pseuds/Rony%20Ark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony is either too much or too little.</p>
<p>He's never enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Little, Too Much

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a piece I wrote when I was in a mood. I read it again a month or so later and thought this was great except I have no clue what I was going for.
> 
> It isn't done and I'm not sure if it ever will be because I have no clue what I was going to write.

She doesn’t even wait for the bruises to fade when she leaves you. She just says sorry and I need space and I can’t be with you and Iron Man, and most of you just wants to shout and scream and holler, “You knew I was going to put Iron Man first!” She says she can’t handle the emotional roller coaster of being your girlfriend if she has to worry about you coming home. It sounds ridiculous when you hear it and it just makes you angrier because you think does she not care if you come home when you aren’t dating? What makes things so different for her that it breaks her heart to see you fly into space and possibly never come back when the two of you  are dating but not when they are just friends, CEO and the guy who still makes the company worth billions?

Tony bites back all of the things he wants to yell because she’s being silly he thinks. She doesn’t wait for the cuts to heal and the bruises to fade or for the memories to be washed away by the stain of alcohol that he’s been choking down since he returned home from shawarma after the battle. He hates her for leaving him, but he knows she was going to leave in some capacity. They always do.

_You’re either too much or too little, Tony._ That was what Maria would always tell him as if that fixed things. As if knowing why people left made it easier to stomach the loneliness. He was too much for all of those people that Howard and Maria would schmooze with at the parties because no one expects an eight year old to understand concepts that most adults struggle with. No one expects a child to understand the politics in everything like Tony does. Too much, he’s always too much. So he starts to drink because it becomes too much for him. But then there is the too little, and Tony still can’t figure out how to fix that. Tony doesn’t get what else he has to give to make Howard and Obadiah and Pepper and Captain Fucking America happy. He doesn’t get why Howard will never look at him and tell him with a smile, a real smile that lights up your eyes and makes the people seeing it as happy as you are, that he’s proud. _I love you_. That was all Tony ever wanted to hear, but the closest he got was, _“You’re my greatest creation.”_   Tony wonders if that still applied when Tony was eight (three years after the video) and had made DUM-E, or when he graduated MIT, or when he crashed three cars in as many weeks on drunken benders with the last one being three days before a semi plows into Howard’s car killing him on impact. Tony wonders if Tony is on the same list as Captain America and the atomic bomb when he said that, or is there a special list for national icons and perfection and profound destruction and guilt that tears you up inside so much that you let your kid inherit it even when he is too young to understand.

_Too much or too little_ , Tony thinks with a scowl as he chases down the pills in the medicine cabinet with one of the more expensive bottles of liquor in stock. Tony’s too drunk to tell what it is but at this point he doesn’t care. Pepper is in Malibu with Happy (like he didn’t know) and Bruce went to some crappy South American village and Natasha and Clint are doing assassin things while Thor is home and Rogers is trying to find himself in an era where all that is left of him is propaganda and pretty lies wrapped up to make people forget that America is the reason the whole world is scared of nuclear war. So Tony just lays on the floor of his  penthouse dipped into the Loki shaped hole.

Today, he was too much.

Tomorrow he’ll be too little. When he wakes he’ll bury himself under the blankets that cost more than they’re worth (after praying to the porcelain god, not that he’s had anything but pills and vodka/whiskey/scotch in the last two days) and he won’t come out until the next idea hits him. The next invention, the _too much_   he knows, but Pepper likes the too much more than too little because she gets results when he’s too much. She doesn’t have to try and fix him, and Pepper doesn’t have to try and lift him up and ultimately fail. Too much is better than too little because at least Obie and Pep and Cap can find use for him then.

He makes sure too little happens when no one needs him because he knows no one wants him. Too little happens when the house is empty and the only comfort that Tony can find is in amber liquid and machines that were perfect no matter what anyone said, including himself. Pepper left before Bruce and Bruce nearly stayed to give Tony company, but Tony has read more of Bruce’s file than the man would be comfortable with so Tony knows how to make sure he goes. Tony needs the too much that leads to the too little (balance, there has to be balance), but Tony isn’t going to do it here with Bruce watching because he doesn’t want his science bro to see Tony like this. So he lets him go with a smile, makes sure the guy makes it to wherever he’s going in one piece, and then downs a whole bottle of the first thing his fingers slip around before Bruce’s plane has even gotten air.

A month later all six of the Avengers have made Stark Tower their home with Thor being the last because he had been in Asgard when the offer had been made. Bruce had come back after a couple of weeks, Clint and Natasha had moved in after whatever it was the two spies needed to do,  and Steve had arrived two days before after he had finished traveling around the country. 


End file.
